It’s fitting as the Yankees stagger toward the end of this season, with Andy Pettitte’s and Mariano Rivera’s impending retirements signifying the end of an era, the final game in the old Yankee Stadium holds a newly special meaning.
The Yankees defeated the still-lousy Orioles, 7-3, on September 21, 2008, with Pettitte picking up the win, Rivera recording the final three outs and Derek Jeter delivering a stellar speech that gets replayed regularly at the new Stadium. That win carried more value than mere sentiment, however. It kept the Yankees mathematically alive in the ’08 playoff race, with an 85-71 record to the Red Sox’s 91-64. The official demise came two days later while the Yankees were in Toronto.
So the 2013 Yankees have a goal that remains attainable, should they choose to recognize it: By playing well against the Rays as they wrap up their home schedule, with a three-game series kicking off Tuesday night, they can give Pettitte and Rivera an entire career in which they never stood in the Bronx as an irrelevant entity.
What, you can’t see the theme of the 2033 Old-Timers’ Day being “Happy 20th anniversary, team that didn’t get eliminated until it went to Houston!”? This is what they have left, and they should recognize it.
Especially when, you know, there could be plenty of irrelevant days coming to this franchise in 2014 and beyond.
Here’s the breakdown: At 82-74, the Yankees’ tragic number for postseason elimination is three against the Indians (86-70), the second American League wild card, and two against the Rays (87-69), who own the top wild-card slot.
Any combination of Yankees losses and Cleveland wins adding up to three will permanently extract the Yankees from the Indians’ side. The Indians close their regular season with a two-game homestand against the awful White Sox, starting Tuesday, and then a four-game visit to awful Minnesota, starting Thursday. The baseball gods are begging the Indians to reach October.
Consequently, the only way the Yankees can control their own fate onto Thursday’s late flight to Houston is by sweeping the Rays, since one loss to Tampa Bay would block them from catching up to their financially strapped AL East neighbors.
If the Yankees win just one or two games over the next three days, they would need help from the White Sox and/or Twins to keep the Indians at bay and stave off mathematical death. And if the Yankees allow themselves to get swept by the Rays, then no one else could bail them out. They would clinch being moot at home for the first time since October 3, 1993, when they wrapped up that 88-74 season (halting a streak of four straight losing campaigns) with a 2-1 victory over David Wells and the Tigers.
They will make this last stand without titular ace CC Sabathia, whom the Yankees announced Monday is done for the season with a Grade 2 left hamstring strain, and who therefore concludes his fifth Yankees year with a career-worst 4.78 ERA. Sabathia has three guaranteed years left on his contract, plus an option for 2017 that will vest as long as he stays healthy. Mark Teixeira, signed through 2016, played in just 15 games this year due to a right wrist injury that eventually required surgery. And you might have heard that Alex Rodriguez is signed through 2017, although his immediate future apparently will be decided by how independent arbitrator Fredric Horowitz feels about the 211-game suspension that Bud Selig slapped on A-Rod.
With the Yankees’ 2013 playoff hopes so slim, it’s hard to ignore how shaky their future looks when you combine their aforementioned shaky commitments with a mandate to get the 2014 payroll below the $189 million luxury-tax threshold; a relatively unproductive farm system; Robinson Cano’s impending free agency; Jeter’s uncertain health; and the retirements of Pettitte and Rivera, still two of the team’s best pitchers.
It could get ugly. For now, though? It would be sublime to let Pettitte and Rivera say they never left their home office without hope.